And all on account of a venison steak, his hopes soared higher than they had ever dared before.
Chapter XVI
Death for a Little Life
Thenceforward Kirstie twice or thrice a week medicined herself with fresh venison, provided assiduously by Young Dave, and by the time spring was fairly in possession of the clearing, she was her old strong self again. But as for Dave’s hopes, they had been reduced to desolation. Miranda had taken alarm at her sudden carnivorous craving, and in her effort to undo that moment’s weakness she had withdrawn herself to the utmost from Dave’s influence. She had been the further incited to this by an imagined aloofness on the part of her furred and feathered pensioners. A pair of foxes, doubtless vagrants from beyond her sphere, had spread slaughter among the hares as they returned from feeding at the cabin. The hungry raiders had laid an ambush at the edge of the clearing on two successive nights. They had killed recklessly. Then they vanished, doubtless driven away by the steady residents who knew how to kill discreetly and to guard their preserves from poachers. But the hares had taken alarm, and few came now o’ nights for Miranda’s carrots and clover. Miranda, with a little ache at her heart, concluded from this that she had forfeited her ascendency among the kin of the ancient wood. There had been a migration, too, among the squirrels, so that now these red busybodies were perceptibly fewer about the cabin roof. And the birds—they were nearly all gone. An unusually early spring, laying bare the fields in the lower country, and bringing out the insects before their wont, had scattered Miranda’s flocks a fortnight earlier than usual. No crumbs could take the place of swelling seeds and the first fat May-fly. But Miranda thought they were fled through distrust of her. Kroof, old Kroof the constant, was all unchanged when she came from her winter’s sleep; but this spring she brought an unusually fine cub with her, and the cub, of necessity, took a good deal of her time and attention away from Miranda. When Miranda was with her, roaming the still, transparent corridors, all the untroubled past came back, crystalline and flawless as of old. Once more the furtive folk went about their business in the secure peace of her neighbourhood; once more she revelled with a kind of intoxication in the miraculous fineness of her vision; once more she felt assured of the mastery of her look. But this was in the intervals between Dave’s visits. When he was at the clearing, everything was different. She was no longer sure of herself on any point. And the worst of it was that the more indifference to him she feigned, the less she felt. She was quite unconscious, all the while, that her mother was shrewdly watching her struggles. She was not unconscious, however, of Dave’s attitude. She saw that he seemed dull and worried, which gratified her, she knew not why, and confirmed her in her coolness. But at last, with a slow anger beginning to burn at his heart, he adopted the policy of ignoring her altogether, and giving all his thought to Kirstie, whereupon Miranda awoke to the conclusion that it was her plain duty to be civil to her mother’s guest.
This change, not obtrusive, but of great moment to Dave, came over the girl in June, when the dandelions were starring the pasture grass. The sowing and the potato planting were just done. The lilac bushes beside the cabin were a mass of purple enchantment. It was not a time for hard indifference; and Dave was quick to catch the melting mood. His manner was such, however, that Miranda could not take alarm.
“Mirandy,” said he, with the merest good comradeship in tone and air, “would ye take a little trip with me to-morrow, now that the crops can spare ye a bit?”
“Where to, Dave?” interposed Kirstie, fearful lest the girl should refuse out of hand, before she knew what Dave proposed to do.
“Why, I’ve got to go over the divide an’ run down the Big Fork in my canoe to Gabe White’s clearin’, with some medicine I’ve brought from the Settlement for his little boy what’s sick. He’s a leetle mite of a chap, five year old, with long, yaller curls, purty as a picture, but that peaked an’ thin, it goes to yer heart to see him. Gabe came in to the Settlement yesterday to see the doctor about him an’ git medicine; but he’s had to go right on to the city to sell his pelts, an’ git some stuff the doctor says the little feller must hev, what can’t be got in the Settlement at all. So Gabe give me this” (and he pulled a bottle out of the inside pocket of his hunting shirt) “to take to him right now, coz the little feller needs it badly. It’s a right purty trip, Mirandy, an’ the Big Fork’s got some rapids ’at’ll please ye. What ye say?”
Dave was growing subtle under Miranda’s discipline. He knew that the picture of the small boy would draw her; and also that the sight of the ailing child, acting upon her quick sympathies, would awaken a new human interest and work secretly in favour of himself. The beauty of the scenery, the excitement of the rapids,—these were a secondary influence, yet he knew they would not be without appeal to the beauty-worshipping and fearless Miranda.
The girl’s deep eyes lightened at the prospect. She would see something a little different, yet not alien or hostile,—a new river, other hills and woods, a deeper valley, a ruder cabin in a remoter clearing, a lonely woman,—above all, a little sick boy with long, yellow hair.
“But it must be a long way off, Dave,” she protested, in a tone that invited contradiction.